This invention relates to an electrical bridging connector to permit convenient and reliable electrical connection of a jack to wire-wrap posts, which posts are typically on a like jack previously wired and in use, and a nonconducting bridging insulator and a wire-wrap post straightner to facilitate such electrical connection as well as a method of using these structures.
This invention is particularly well adapted for utilization with Western Electric 951A connectors or jacks which connect to Western Electric remreed line-link or trunk-link network No. 1A and No. 1 electronic switching system telephone equipment.
Western Electric 951A jacks are used to connect multiple conductor cables to the above-described equipment. One such jack can connect up to thirty-two conductors. For a variety of reasons, particularly including the need to expand or alter service, telephone company users of such equipment frequently need to connect additional or substitute cables to the switching equipment after the original 951A jack is wired and installed. Such recabling is typically done by wire wrapping the conductors of the new cables on the wire-wrap posts of the existing 951A jack and later cutting the old, first connected cables out of the system, thereby disconnecting them from the 951A jack. Alternatively, in the prior art practice, splices are made directly onto existing cable conductors, which is referred to as a "half-tap" or "Y-splice" of the cable. Both methods of connecting new cables to the existing equipment make it difficult to identify and repair electrical problems experienced in the system, are difficult to accomplish, frequently result in loss of service of all or a portion of the system for undesirably long periods, and require large amounts of labor, particularly when virtually simultaneous disconnection of various cables must occur during service interruptions to permit switching from an old cable system to a newly installed one.